Sorrows of Severus Snape
by SLYTHERINSPARKLES
Summary: Draco needs an escape from being a Death Eater, will that lead him to the Chosen One? Please R&R! CHAPTER 9 UP!
1. His Seventh Year

C1 :)

a/n

starts off with the end of summer before draco's 7th year!

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><p>The chandelier hanging over the parlor of the Malfoy Manor was a beautiful arrangement of light and glass, of which Draco was often fixated. It seemed to gently mimic the night sky, and its mimicking brought about an unwelcome reminder of Hogwarts that often prodded the back of his mind.<p>

His grayish eyes flickered over the bouquet of diamonds. "_Draco?_" The voice seemed to be coming from another dimension, as if the speaker was from a dream that lingered into day. It was said again and Draco was pulled from his reverie. He turned to face his father.

"I know things have changed for you, son," Lucius Malfoy said, drifting around a large black sofa, his pale hand grazing the leather. His son was identical to his younger self - he could be a long-lost brother, a twin. Looking at Draco was like staring into a time-transcending mirror, although Draco appeared to be afflicted with some kind of life-depriving illness. His son walked around the Manor like a ghost, a shallow shell of himself. He spent most of his time in his room, scribbling away into a leather-bound journal that held the remnants of himself. The thought occurred to Lucius that reading it would be insightful, yet he realized he had no desire to uncover the demons that tortured his son's poor soul.

Lucius said his name again. "Draco."

Rather forcefully his son lifted his head, his eyes piercing. "_Yes_?"

Lucius was grateful for this response. He spoke quickly. "Draco, you must realize that you cannot go through life like this? We all must cope - _you_ must cope, Draco."

It seemed Lucius had lost his chance. His beautiful boy's eyes drifted into his dream world, where Lucius imagined there would be no pain, no strife, only a transcendental realm of sanction.

"Is this really what our lives have degraded to, father?" Draco asked, his voice clear and sharp. It seemed he had been awaiting to eloquate the statement. "Coping?"

Lucius cocked his shiny blonde head. "Well I don't expect you to exactly thrive in our current situation, Draco."

Draco's willpower stubbornly refused to look at his father. He couldn't stand to see what he had become. A trip to Azkaban hadn't done him well. His white-blond hair had turned a sickly shade of grey. His skin was so starkly pale it glowed in the dim light. Draco blinked sadly into the windows. A white peacock walked proudly on a hedge. It could have been a ghost roaming throughout the gardens.

A thought came to him. Draco realized his arrogance had faded with his family's prestige. No longer was their name spoken with the reverence Draco desired. He turned to look. His gaze what shrouded in apathy. To care was emotionally exhausting.

He walked autonomously up the staircase to his room. It was grand and extensive with an overall emphasis on the colour white. It symbolised many things for Draco and his family. Purity would be one.

Simultaneously it represented weakness, frailty, it was a quiet voice speaking of a dainty little boy that hair to match the walls and eyes to match the stone.

Veering off from his bleached bedroom was the bathroom. It also followed the same style - snow white tiles and perfectly clear, spotless mirrors, which Draco supposed could show the seer what they refused to see themselves. From a flurry of sparkles and lavender mist appeared Thimbles, Dobby's replacement. She was overly short, even by House-Elf standards. She was endowed with huge purplish eyes and skin a shade of malformed grey.

"Masterses Malfoy, sir! Cares for towels, Masterses? Needses to get cleans?" she asked frantically, tossing a towel at him, which fell awkwardly onto the floor.

He sighed. "No, get out."

And in that shard of a moment Thimbles and the towel were gone in another wave of purple smoke and glitter.

Draco felt like all his personality, his life, his _air _had been sucked from his lungs. He was drained. Exasperated, that was the word. Exasperated. Vaguely, he remembered advice from a counselor at St. Mungo's. She was a pudgy red-haired woman that vaguely reminded him of a Muggle he had seen while on holiday in London. "In order to change your emotions, you must first identify your emotions." And so he attempted to identify the very few emotions that plagued him. Loneliness. Fatigue. Hungry? He hadn't eaten in days and yet the need evaded him. Sadness? No. An absence of emotion.

Draco had refused to take the train to Hogwarts, and his request was a viable option as any.

The Anti-Apparating Charm had died with Dumbledore. Draco had packed his things (two suitcases, a bookbag, and a trunk), ode farewell to his parents and turned on his heel. When he opened his eyes he stood before the wrought-iron gate leading into the Hogwarts grounds. Filch was checking luggage. "Ay. You can't Apparate into Hogwarts! It's-it's illegal!" he cried out.

Draco gave him the most hateful look he could must and strode past. "_Locomotor bags,_" he said quite clearly, directing his floating luggage with the smooth tip of his wand. He would refuse for his things to be checked. Not because he carried anything pertaining to the Dark Arts, but because he believed he was above it all. His elitist attitude could not be extinguished so easily.

He also chose not to attend the first night's feast. Instead, he walked up what seemed a thousand flights of stone staircases to the seventh floor and turned onto the White Hall. The blonde-headed boy kept walking until he reached a huge, blue-ish mirror with a shattering embedded in the black-spattered glass. He pressed one pale palm to his reflection and the mirror became almost translucent - it had transformed into a white stone pathway. Draco ventured into the passage.

DONE with C1! :)


	2. The Dream

"Is there anything left of us?"

The words lingered in the air like a mist. It was brisk and sightly chilled, a weather in which Draco could find no complaint. He sat under a weeping willow, sheltered by the protection and privacy of its enclosing leaves. The rich chestnut colour of its trunk had faded to an ethereal paleness. Its leaves were a shimmering light green. Complete silence. Had he gone deaf? He hoped so. Eternal quiet was a welcome exchange for the cacophany that had engulfed him.

He eyes flickered. An awakening. He attempted to emerge from the dream. A sparkling night over a castle.

"Could anyone say?"

The voice scared him, spooked him like yelling disrupts a horse's natural peace. He jumped to his feet, turning his head to see who had spoken, utterly and completely terrified. Diamonds lay glittering on the grass. He binked, and among the diamonds a figure had appeared. It was a girl. Auburn hair hung down her back. She was sitting among the diamonds scattered on the ground. Lounging without a care in her own horrific world.

He rushed to her. "What did you say?"

"Who could tell you, Draco? Who knows the answer?"

At this answer he was understandably frustrated. He would expect her, this girl, this figment of his imagination and occupant of this strange yet beautiful wonderland to know the answer. He tried to remember the silly remnants of his time in Occlumency. Dreams led to the subconscious, and so this girl must be a key into some sort of horrid repressed memory from his childhood. She should know the answers that plagued the Draco of his dream. Or atleast show him the way to leave her topsy-turvy little realm.

"_He _knows."

The girl shrugged. "Does it matter, even when we're here, Draco?"

"It might. It depends on where exactly we are."

The girl vanished from her place among the sparkling stones and appeared by the weeping willow, leaning against its lovely white trunk. The image seemed very fitting to Draco - he had come to the conclusion that the girl must be a guardian angel sent by a God he had long forgotten, forsaken when he took on the allegiance of a barely-human maniac.

She kept talking. "But where do you think we are, Draco?" The lovely figment asked, leaning over to him. He was mystified, mesmerized, hypnotized by her.

His voice was a quiet murmur of a sound, yet his whisper carried throughout the forest. "Well, I'm dead, aren't I? And so are you, and this is heaven, or this is nothing. Or maybe we're stuck in some kind of dream . . ."

The girl gave him a sad smile. She turned around to face a meadow lined with white flovers and little green clovers. "This isn't nothing." Draco wasn't sure the meadow had been there before, but reprimanded himself internally for minding. The girl danced about the field like a child who had just been taught ballet.

"I thought you knew what this was," Draco said, quite frustrated with it all. "But it's obvious you don't. I thought things weren't like this. After."

She materialised at his side. "After?"

"Yes,_ after_."

A thought then occured to Draco that he was being rude to the dream-girl. What had given him the right to intrude on the figment's after life? He was sardonically ashamed and retreated into the comfortable sanctuary of the tree. She followed him.

"But this isn't after, Draco. You're not dead. They haven't gotten you yet."

He side-stepped and tried to evade her permeating glance. "Wrong - _he_'s not gotten me!"

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><p>The strange area of the meadow dissapeared.<p>

Draco felt a strange sense of awakening into this new realm, and he agreed that it was a much better change in scenery. He was left to linger in a field of wild flower, his anxious mental state soothed by the crashing of waves upon an unseen shore. The sky was a heavenly gold, a peek of angels to mere humans, an olympus drifting over the countryside.

A small boy with an ecstatic smile and shining platinum hair scampered throughout the mirage.

In one tiny hand was the tail of kite, which followed him high above in the sun-streaked clouds. He laughed and danced like a little fairy, or a little elf of a child dressed quite elegantly in a grey cashmere sweater and black trousers. The boy didn't even see Draco, yet he ran right past. His bronze eyes were fixated on the white kite following him. He filled the air with joyous, carefree laughter. The sound a baby bird would make when he jumps from his nest and is taken away by wings he was not sure could fly.

The boy ran past and Draco turned to watch him. The child, an image of himself in another, more beautiful age, happily ran down the hill that would lead down the field to the craggy shore.

He'd come to the conclusion that the summer field was the country behind the Malfoy Manor. When he was a child, it had been a paradise; an adolescent, a refuge; now it was nothing more but proof of the consequences his family must face. In a way, he imagined himself terribly persecuted. He had done nothing to deserve his life sentence - it had been imposed upon him.

Yet this child beared none of Draco's burdens. He was a wild bird, frolicking happily in the realm of his own. He belonged to the wild, for in a sense he was a part of it. So was his nature, he moved through the flowers and breeze as if they were a part of him. Draco could not identify with this creature, although he subconsciously knew of their relation. The child was too different, far too seperate from the being Draco knew himself to be.

But Draco knew he must'nt whine about his predicament. Life in the wizarding world wasn't as perfect and whimsical as it once was . . . yet he couldn't help remembering the the ordeal of his sixth year and the mission that had been given to him. If he could not fufill his father's role, no future was secured for him.

Then what would he do? He would not, he could not, stand the torturing life in the Manor anymore - Draco would rather kill himself than drag himself through the disgusting life his father had created. There would be no easy way out, he told himself. There would be no going back. Draco knew that. He'd known that from the start, yet just from snippets stitched together in his distant memory, haphazardly mingled together to create a disjointed belief. He'd heard Lucius and his mother discussing it - quietly, muttering, anxiously whispering, as if their fate would hear and come running.

He shut his eyes. He would have to leave. He must. Was there an option?

_No, _his frazzled mind answered. _I cannot take much more of this._

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><p>AN

its been a while! :) But i like this chapter! Its nice, its a little plot device for a fancy author like me!


	3. Quidditch

Draco awoke from the dream. He breathed cool, fresh air. He saw everything clearly.

He was in Hogwarts, in the Slytherin Common Room. A peaceful, joyous place. A place where he hoped his unfortunaties need not be brought up again. He was happily thrust back into his old life, the hustle and bustle of Hogwarts, the silliness and stupidity of his friends.

"Draco!"

"_Draco? _You're back? I thought you'd been expelled!"

"_That's _Draco Malfoy."

Blaise pulled him by the arm, dragging him aside from the under Fifth Years chattering about the newfound prescence of their little Prince of Slytherin. Due to his father, Draco was regarded almost royally by the younger Slytherins, and who (in order of their role models) had ranked Salazar Slytherin himself first, and Draco a close second. Blaise shoved two Fourth Years off a cushy leather couch by the fire place and sat down.

"Have you heard about Potter?"

Draco blinked, collecting his scattered bearings. "Potter? No, what about him?"

Blaise smirked. "Well, he's not here."

"You're kidding."

"I'm not. He's on the run, off with Granger and Weasley."

Draco stilled. An almost tangible quality was in the air, stifled only by secrecy. Blaise understood the look in Draco's eyes. A common knowing was shared between them. They were brothers, suffering together in their hardship.

"On the run, you say?" Draco asked quietly.

"Yes. From You-Know-Who and the Snatchers, I suppose." Blaise said, his dark eyes staring at the pale form that was his best friend. He was undeniably thin and pallid, a ghostly tinge flawed him. "Lydia's told me they've been sighted somewhere in London. Funny, isn't it? I'd expect they'd have left the country by this time."

Draco raised an invisible blonde eyebrow. "You think 'out of the country' is too far from You Know Who's jurisdiction?"

Blaise smirked. "You never know, Malfoy. But I think it depends. You Know Who wouldn't expend the energy searching across the world for a person who wasn't extremely imperative to him. So anyone who isn't Potter."

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><p>Draco spent a long time contemplating on what he and Blaise had discussed.<p>

It was a silly, childish dream. Such things were impossible in their day and age. One could not simply vanish from society, from home, from their parents and their friends. But Potter had done it, hadn't he? And Draco knew he could accomplish whatever Potter could.

His gray eyes spent hours gazing through frosted glass at the grounds. The shimmering lake and the white shore beyond it, and a swift sky over it all. The world extended far beyond Hogwarts and his problems. Draco was determined. He would find a sanctuary. He would find happiness again.

Yet his escape could not come so easily. He was preoccupied with school things; Quidditch trials, Potions class, keeping up with Lydia Garnett and her outlandish demands of him. Lydia Garnett was the daughter of the famous witch clothingmaker, Lillian Garnett, who owned a boutique in Hogsmeade with a particular affinity for Slytherin green and silver. The girl had pale skin, dark curly hair, and green eyes. She had a rather pointed face and a very angular jawline. Lydia completed Draco and Blaise's trifecta. Although she could be annoying and bossy, Draco had developed a sort of admiration for her. Yet it was a sisterly admiration, a feeling few classmates could comprehend.

Lydia approached him after Potions one day. It had been a Double class, which meant the Gryffindors had joined them for an hour and a half of brewing the Draught of Disgust. It was a nauseating mixture of rotten maggots, dead Cornish pixies, and trolls' feet. Draco amused himself by flicking the muddy concotion at Gryffindors and afterwords felt quite childish.

"Draco," she said clearly, taking hold of one fragile arm. "Blaise's told me of your little plan."

"My little plan?" Malfoy asked snarkily, pulling away. Blaise couldn't've told the prick.

"Yes. I've heard you're vying for Quidditch Captain this year." He was relieved.

Draco shrugged. "Who else but me, Lydia? The Seeker's always Captain. Well, in Slytherin anyway," He added, remembering that one Gryffindor Keeper who'd been named Captain.

Lydia smiled. "Of course. Well, Draco, I think you'd been a fine Captain. But you must show up for practices. And schedule practices, let's not forget booking the pitch, shall we? Oh, and Draco, my mother's said she'll make up some very cute little things for the supporters, if you'd be interested. She just needs your backing if she'll go into the trouble of making them. The complete outfit would be a galleon, but if you want cashmere instead of wool I'll expect she'll rack the price up."

He shook his head. "Uh, is that really necessary, Lydia?"

"Well, if you want to wear your old uniform things, go right ahead."

Draco quickened his pace and walked briskly away from her. He enjoyed Lydia's gleeful prescence, yet her eagerness drove him mad. He understood the time and effort being the Quidditch Captain would take. And he still questioned if he was up to the responsibility. What about his silly little fantasies of running off somewhere? To be Captain he'd have to remain securely present, both on the pitch and mentally. He couldn't afford for his head to spent its time in the clouds.

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><p>It was a brisk October day outside. Not too chilly, yet not freezing. It was Draco's favorite sort of weather.<p>

He smiled and looked about the Quidditch pitch. It was the first day of trials. He was almost twitching with nervous excitement. Yes, Draco himself could hardly believe it, but the boy was nervous! Yet the feeling seldom bothered him - he enjoyed the jitter in his body, the eagerness in his step, the _life _he felt. Surging through his pale body, coursing through long-dead veins. It was a marvelous, exhilarating thing.

Fellow Seventh Year Jameson Hawkley had been chosen to direct the trials. He was last years' Keeper; tall, burly, huge and dark-haired. An impressive stature. A frightening silhouette. Draco was thrilled.

Slytherin Quidditch Team hopefuls all crowded around Hawkley - some were even tiny first years, self-concious fourth years, a spattering of fifth and sixth. The majority were seventh year boys (Draco mentally corrected himself; _men_) who held shiny black broomsticks and wore confident, angular faces. As custom of Slytherins, the entirety of the boys scowled with displeasure at their oh-so unfortunate situation. Their eyes were hard and piercing, all alight with the joys of unfriendly competition.

"We'll all begin with a mock game," Hawkley said. His voice was a booming, commanding airhorn of speech that demanded respect. "All prospective players group into a section of your position," he explained. "Keepers by the stands, Seekers by the poles, so on." They gathered into their little pods and Hawkley was quite amused by his leadership. "Create teams amongst yourselves, mount your brooms and play. Each scrimmage will last for ten minutes. Begin."

Fourteen flyers soared into the air. Draco's heart felt restrained in his chest as his body was restrained to the ground. His soul belonged to the sky, the open air, and the incessant freedom that is the heartbeat of Quidditch. The ten minutes the first team took seemed to last days. Draco was beaming, his excitement changed to pure happiness. The fourteen came back down, and Draco left earth. He flew far above Hogwarts, miles away from the ground. He rejoiced in his sweet, delicious and tantalising freedom.

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><p>AN

:) c4 soon!


	4. The Perishable and the Imperishable

Chapter Four; The Perishable and the Imperishable

I like this one :)

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><p>The days at Hogwarts passed slowly and coldly. The cheerful gust that had seemed to blow through the school in the month before was an untrue echo of years past. Things were all too very quiet. Since Dumbledore had died, Gryffindors and other residents of the school who'd aligned with the Headmaster had become restless. The red and gold cloaked students often whispered about their hopes and their hero, Harry Potter. Somehow, they all knew deep down in their silly little lion-hearts that he was alive - vanquishing Death Eaters and performing other miraculous deeds. Draco's cynical soul wouldn't believe it himself, but he so envied their optimism.<p>

He remembered his father's words about coping and his own utter lack of it. Perhaps wishing and dreaming about Harry Potter was how the Gryffindors coped, and perhaps he should take a hint from all of them. And so Draco spent long hours eavesdropping on his rival classmates - in the library, in the bathrooms, in class. He was captivated by their stories. His daydreams provided a welcome escape from reality. Draco wondered why the Gryffindors never stopped speaking ever so eloquently about the Chosen One's hypothesised whereabouts with himself so close in the vincinity. He supposed they had forgotten about him and moved on to the Dark Lord, yet it surprised him that there had been no conflict. Draco was a known and confirmed Death Eater. As was the entire Malfoy family. It was common knowledge among the Wizarding World. Yet he attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry along with aspiring Aurors and professors. Not even the Ministry had contacted him.

A chill seemed to pass through the castle. Fires did not seem cosy, neither did cookies and cakes and muffins seem sweet. Draco wore layers and layers of heavy clothing, yet he seemed always shivering. Others commented on his increasing thin body, although he had always been slender. Yet Draco could not fit eating into his busy schedule, he was far too preoccupied following Gryffindors about.

The only refuges from his dull, chilly existense he found in daydreams and Quidditch. In both he found uncondictional freedom and both he cherished. His team consisted of individuals he hand-picked, and unlike other captains who had chosen based on friendships or test answers, Draco chose for pure talent. This results in the most wonderful Quidditch team Draco had felt Slytherin had in ages. He had a special place in his green Slytherin heart for his Keeper, a Sixth Year named Spencer McConnell. Spencer was a very statuesque boy like Draco, yet he was funny and outgoing and a pleasure to be around, and kept Draco's mind off the tragic and threatening things that plagued it.

Draco had awoken early one morning in the dormitory and saw that Blaise was still sleeping. It was altogether uncommon for this to happen as Draco went to bed around nine and woke sometime after eleven, causing him to skip breakfast and the majority of his study hour. Sleep was addictive, he found, and he could not soak up enough of it. But because he had got up so early he had hours of time to seek out Gryffindors before Double Charms with the Hufflepuffs at ten, and so he went searching. He looked throughout the entire library, even venturing into the dusty Restricted Section, three of the boys bathrooms, (including the Prefects') Potions classroom, the Great Hall, and after a long and cold trek, the Owlery. He returned to his dormitory frozen, his long fingers white with chill, and found that Blaise was still in bed. He checked his watch. It was only eight-thirty. Why wasn't he up? Draco leaned over Blaise's bed and looked at his friend cautiously. He pressed his two pale hands on the mattress and pushed - one, two, _three _times and Blaise finally awoke, his greenish eyes staring up at the blonde boy.

"My God, Draco," he exhaled, his piercing eyes scrutinising his fellow Slytherin. "What's happened to you? You're like a corpse."

He swung up out of bed and Draco rushed to the silver-framed mirror hanging on the wall between their two beds. He examined himself to the smallest detail; his eyes were a light gray surrounded by a fringe of white eyelashes, his hair was a white blonde, his face was pale as snow. Draco's bony hands examined himself. His cheekbones protruded slightly, yet that was the only defect he could see.

"I feel like I haven't seen you in days, Draco," Blaise said, opening the trunk at the end of his bed and pulling out clothes for the day. A black sweater. A white shirt to go under. Black trousers. A Slytherin tie and scarf. "Why're you up so early? We all leave you sleeping every morning. You're never in the Great Hall either, for dinners or lunches or anything, I'll say thats why you're so thin." Blaise shook his head. "Oh, and Draco, just look at your clothes! You're swimming in them."

Draco examined his countless layers of clothing and held them up. Over two undershirts and a long sleeved shirt he wore a gray cable-knit that hung off his skeletal body like a rag. He grimaced. The sweater had fit him perfectly his Fifth Year, before all this Death Eater business started.

"And look, you haven't touched the post the eagle-owls bring you. There's a whole stack by your night stand, Draco, haven't you seen? I expect Narcissa's worried sick." Blaise checked under the bed for a pair of socks, found one gray and one black and pulled them on his feet. He watched the Malfoy grasp the collection of letters, each addressed to him in a different handwriting. He flipped through them, apparently mystified he'd not seen them there before. He recognized his mother's curly script and ripped apart the envelope, leaving scraps on the floor.

_Draco,  
>Why haven't you been answering the post? Lucius's been writing weekly. How are your classes? And how is Severus doing as Headmaster?<em>

The letter continued on for the entire page of parchment, yet Draco couldn't bring himself to finish it. He folded it back in place and returned it to its fragmented envelope. He sighed at Blaise. "Has she sent post to you?"

Blaise nodded. "Yes, to me and Lydia. Just asking if you're still around or not, I don't know." He shrugged and rummaged through his book bag. It hung on a wooden bedpost and from it came a dozen pieces of parchment, organisers, quills, and spare ink. He was apparently trying to find the letter. "I really can't believe you're here so early, Draco. I honestly feel as if we haven't spoken in ages."

"We have, though, haven't we?"

"Just in passing. You're always off doing something, Draco. I hear you spent lots of time in library. Getting very good marks, are you?" Blaise asked sarcastically. "You're just like Lydia. See her much in there?"

He shook his head. "No. Never."

"Maybe you just aren't looking for her. Lydia's been avoiding me lately. I hear she's saying I want some Ravenclaw girl now. I can't understand a bit of her." He smiled. "You should talk to her, Draco. She'd probably cheer you right up. Hasn't she been around the pitch?"

Draco shook his head again. "I've not seen her, Blaise, but she might've been. She came up to me a while ago about organising some uniforms for the team, supporters, and the like. I didn't think much of it."

Blaise laughed. "Of course you didn't." He looked at his silver-rimmed watch. "It's about half past nine, Draco, would you like to head up to Charms?" He smiled at his friend, it was a good smile. Draco could see it in his eyes and felt it through his shaken body. The blonde boy nodded, took his book bag and followed Blaise down the stone stairs to the common room, traversed to the shattered mirror of Salazar Slytherin, and walked across the long underground passage that would take the boys back inside the castle.

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><p>an

I started drawing a portrait of Draco, its really of tom felton from DHp2 and its coming along nicely! :)

the title "pershiable/imperishable" relates to draco and harry. thats how Draco sees himself and 'the boy who lived' :) its from a bible verse, but i cant find which one!

Also, just finished reading ernest hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises". I was disappointed to say the least, i have to write an essay on it for my A.P. Literature class. I've come to think of my writing style almost a complete opposite to the modernist theory of writing. Modernism is way too terse for me, I need to have lots of sensory details in my writing!

Hmm, what will happen in c5?


	5. Slytherin VS Gryffindor

Chapter Five; Slytherin V. Gryffindor

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><p>AN  
>Just uploaded a new Halloween themed avatar! I think its cute! Finished my essay on the sun also rises by Ernest Hemingway, it turned out good! Also quit working on my drawing of draco. Focusing more on photography, I ADORE fall colours and enhancing them via photo editors. Also, Im paranoid my computer will flip out so I transferred everything to three little flash drives! Hehe. Ive been very creative lately and it makes me HAPPY. Well time for chapter 5!<p>

And please review! It makes me such a happy camper! :)

* * *

><p>Draco walked onto the pitch, a breeze blowing his scarf behind him, what seemed to be hundreds of students screaming at him, wind rustling in his ears. He held his broomstick, a black Nimbus 2001, in his right hand. He gripped the broom tightly. Draco and his Quidditch team were outfitted in the new uniforms of the year; redesigned, stylish, functional. He felt fresh and new and aerodynamic. The air brought tears to his eyes.<p>

They'd been huddled in the Slytherin Common Room for two and a half hours, madly discussing strategies. Comparing and contrasting, dissecting the tiny details, bringing up every possible scenario. They'd been up talking until midnight when they came to an agreement. A plan that would conquer all others, a way to surely beat the Gryffindors fairly. Draco hated cheating when it came to Quidditch, but tolerated in all other realms. He didn't want to have to cheat to beat Gryffindor. He wanted to punish them and make them walk off the pitch with their heads bowed. He wanted to make sure everyone at Hogwarts knew what Quidditch team had practised more, had bled more, had _hurt _more. And it was Slytherin. They'd come, they'd fly, and they would conquer. They would have a victory Gryffindor could only dream of.

As Draco stood at the edge of the pitch, he felt something he hadn't felt for a while. He felt nearly unstoppable, inpenetrable. Strong. He couldn't feel any pain.

They rose up into the air. He shook hands with the Gryffindor captain. It was a boy the same height as him, yet _huge_. He had to be the Keeper. The Gryffindor boy crushed Draco's pale hand and Draco tried to crush back. Madam Hooch told them they'd had enough and they stepped back.

"Now," she said, her voice magically magnified to crescendo over the entire Quidditch pitch. "What I want is a clean, _fair_ game. Let's try not to have any concussions or broken bones this time. I expect you both to play cordially. Malfoy, Hawthorn." She gave them both piercing looks. "Begin!"

The Snitch was released. The Quaffle thrown in mid-center of the pitch, leaving Chasers rushing at full speed to retrieve it. Draco soared far above the ground, even higher than the stands. He liked to linger in what he called the sweet spot, a hiding place behind the Hufflepuff stand where he was obscured by the blowing banner. His eyes searched the entire area, there was the Gryffindor Seeker - Potter's replacement - a Fifth Year named Jacob Harvington. The opposing Seeker was flying over the midst of the game. _Idiot,_ Draco thought. He brought the first rule of Seeker-dom; never be in plain view. He must be new.

"Gryffindor V. Slytherin!" The commentator called out happily. It was a boy named Zacharias Smith, a Hufflepuff. "Tonight is a very exciting night folks . . . not just for Gryffindor and Slytherin, but for the entire school! Tonight we have Draco Malfoy as the Slytherin Captain and Seeker, Chase Hawthorn as Gryffindor Captain and Keeper - look at _that_!"

Rafael Kensington, one of Draco's Beaters, had hit the Bludger about as hard as he could. It hit Gryffindor Chaser Samantha Hodge squarely in the stomach. She collapsed over her broom and collapsed through the air, making contact with the grass. "Slytherin Beater Rafael Kensington has made contact! Oh, that must hurt, just look at her! Well, its the game, I suppose - what can you do?"

Draco was infuriated. He flew down to where Kensington hung in the air, observing the Gryffindor girl. "What was that? Are you trying to kill her? She didn't even have the Quaffle!" Rafael turned to him and scowled. "It was a great hit, Kensington, but focus on who's close to scoring. Got it?" He flew back up, dodging a Bludger sent from Gryffindor in retaliation, and returned to his sweet spot.

Smith continued. "And look, Kensington's had a good chewing out by Slytherin Captain Draco Malfoy! Ah! Hodge's being wheeled away by Madam Pomfrey, a gruesome sight! By the game goes on! Slytherin Chaser Gage passes to Chaser West who passes back to Gage, nearly missing a Bludger sent by Gryffindor Beater Jameson . . . the Snitch still has not been found! Gryffindor Seeker Harvington looks anxiously as Chaser West shoots and SCORES in Gryffindor's hoops - HAWTHORN LETS IT THROUGH! 15 points to Slytherin!"

Draco liked to stay where he was and observe. He manouvered (sp?) perfectly through the air, catching glimpses of the Gryffindor Seeker wander aimlessly for the Snitch. Yet it seemed as he had been spotted by the Hufflepuff girls in the spectator stands. They smiled and waved at him and blew kisses. He blushed and dived back to the centre-pitch, weaving in and out of the action. "What's Malfoy doing?" Smith asked the audience. "He is just in and out of the game while his Chasers make their way to score again! Gage is in possesion of the Quaffle, passes to West, who passes to Zabini, Bludger hit by Gryffindor Beater Edgar Holliday collides with Slytherin Chaser Blaise Zabini but he is not hurt! He continues on his trek to the goals, he is not easily distracted!"

As Draco watched Blaise sprint to the hoops he felt a surge of pride for his best friend.

"SCORE! Score by Blaise Zabini! 15 points to Slytherin! And a lead of 30-0! Come ON, Gryffindor!" Smith screamed. Draco was busy listening to Smith's very entertaining comedy when he saw a flick of gold fly through the air. It was sparkling. His heart raced. His entire body froze up. It was time. Without thinking, immediately, autonomously his body connected to the golden path of the Snitch. He followed it so closely, he was less than an arm's length away. It darted dangerously close to the ground, Draco knew this game, he'd done this dance with Potter five years ago. But the new Seeker was no Potter, and that fact made his heart ache. He wouldn't come up so close to him, he wouldn't shove him into walls, he wouldn't threaten his life over a Quidditch game. It was all too easy. Draco took the Snitch in his right hand, zoomed back to centre pitch and won the game.

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><p>Okay, because I'm confused:<p>

SLYTHERIN QUIDDITCH TEAM  
>captain &amp; seeker: draco<br>beaters: rafael kensington & kip strider  
>chasers: thomas gage, andrew west, blaise<br>keeper: spencer mcConnell

what kind of name is kip strider? what kinds of names are all of these? bc i really have no idea.

Please review! :)


	6. A Refuge

Whatever gust of life and wisdom that had captured itself in Draco left him. It was a sad and desperate departure; Draco's now uneasy and restless heart yearned for a sense of comfort, normality. Yet there was none. Just as Autumn's auburn leaves had fell to winter, Draco's sanity had left him. Perhaps the Quidditch match had struck it gone, perhaps it was the far too many butterbeers consumed in the Common Room after. The recklessness that Narcissa and Lucius had attempted to force out of their son resurfaced with a tizzy. Every day felt a year. Each minute spent in Hogwarts' caging stone felt a month. He writhed inside his captive walls, and in doing so found a sport he did so much enjoy. Making those surrounding him's lives a living hell.

The exception, as always, was Blaise. Sometimes at night, in the midst of hazy and frightful dreams, he made a shadowy wish that he could've had a brother and that brother would be Blaise. He enjoyed to think of the differences the new 'Malfoy' Blaise would have; horrid, shining white hair and glimmering grey eyes. He'd had another name too. His family did so like their traditions, in particular the gothic and sophisticated - giving their children elegant names of constellations.

Blaise had seemed to recognize the changes that had taken place in his friend Draco. He was sometimes violent, always cynical, in some rare occaisons depressed. He frequented the library, devouring encyclopaedias and researching Wizarding places of heritage in Europe. Blaise had an idea of what Draco would do. He'd had the same idea himself, well, hadn't every seventeen year old boy? They'd all entertained daydreams of adventurous fantasy in whimsical and dangerous worlds. Yet the daydreams did not seem so dreamlike to Draco, he viewed his desires as an entirely possible mode of escape from the wretched life he'd been plagued with. Paranoia was an entirely other thing that'd come to Draco. He slept with a candle lit by his four-post, at the quietest noise he'd jump and grab his wand (placed carefully within reach) with shaking, pale fingers. _"Lumos." _Nonverbal spells came most easily to him, especially in his current predicament. A Death Eater could be there - lurking in the solemn shadows haunting the corners of the dormitory, waiting to lunge out and kill him. A torturous death would be fair pay for the unforgivable sins of the father.

"Draco," Blaise called, half-asleep, from his neighbouring bed. "Again, Draco? Third time this night." Yet Blaise knew not to push the subject too hard, Draco was in an entirely different position. A position of awkward importance in the wretched circle of Death Eaters. Blaise remained on the side-lines, he was not branded a member, nor had any word of his impending inaguration come. Blaise knew Draco was living a life of serendipity and duality; he walked the many corridors of Hogwarts with a Dark Mark burned into the white skin of his left wrist, stinging proof of his life sentence.

It was because of this that Draco left.

He could no longer endure the days and nights of panic, of unknowing, of uncertainty. He lived in a searing, terrifying world where one glance at his left forearm led to his entire body convulsing and breaking out into a cold sweat - tears ran from his eyes as his vomited compulsively, his body attempting to rid itself of corruption. The Room of Requirement gave him an escape. He screamed as loud as he could as he went through another of his horrifying cycles. He would vomit until there was nothing left inside of him but water. He would lay in bed night after sleepless night, waiting for the visitor that would end his life. He cried and screamed and cried.

Yet he was eternally faithful for the refuge the Room provided him. It was a special bathroom, even more special than the lavish Prefects' Bathroom. There was just one spotless toilet in the centre. A large sink with plenty of soap off to the side. And a large and cushy bed by the windowed wall. When Draco looked off through the stained-glass, it was a reminder of the magic of the Room. He saw off into the fields and sea of a wonderful land he had know far long ago, and had visited sometime in a dream.

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><p>I really LOVED writing this chapter! I think we needed some angst! :)<br>OH and the last sentence is a reference to the earlier chapter, "A Dream". Or whatever its called, hehe.  
>Hope you liked it!:)<p> 


	7. The Last Night

_The Last Night _

The day had been extremely long for Draco. Once more, the hours passed like the long months of summer at the Malfoy Manor, although his current surroundings lacked the scenic accomodations of his country home. The Manor lay down a winding moonlit road, the entire property was enclosed by a high and foreboding wrought iron gate. The metal was sculpted meticulously into a thousand delicate designs. Angels and snakes and the legends of the past guarded the Manor and its fragile family on three sides. The gate ended when the countryside behind the Manor melted into craggy shore. The Malfoys sought no protection from the sea. They had held it as a comfort for generations. It could be taken as a metaphor for the family themselves. Icy water thrashed about together, crashing in a beautiful symphony of harmless violence. The beach was not so much sand as it was rock. In the days when he was young, Narcissa and Lucius would take their only son out to the seashore. They wore lighter colors than they usually did within their chillingly elegant home. They dressed the young Draco in white. Draco imagined the conjured image of his childhood must've been when he was eight or so. Young, free, and almost innocent. Draco looked upon the sunlit shore and saw decadence laid out before him, yet the decadence he perceived laid only in the rock, the white waters, and the sky. He did not care for the material goods his mother craved, nor the power and importance his father yearned for. It was a lovely little time. Little did Draco know of the shadowed future his father had paved for him. It was a long and dark road of broken glass stretched out before him, cascading ever so slightly into the omnipressive future.

It was this scene that Draco's guardian angels, lovely and haunting creatures saddened by their charge's fate, had brought back to the boy in his dreams. They loved to speak through dreams to the child, for he was so hardened to the outside world and so focused on his inner being, his desires and thoughts, that he took extraordinary value in them. He wrote his dreams down and read them over every night, believing them to hold magnificent importance. He wanted the dreams to guide him away from his situation. That is what the guardian angels attempted to do. Yet even they, the fairest of all beings, did not have a clear answer for Draco. They came to a conclusion that the boy would need to find his own path, his own way of freeing himself from the sharded road.

Draco had spent the last half hour vomiting the remains of his dinner. Capillaries in his face had been broken by the sheer trauma. His grey eyes were red with a mixture of tears and stress. His pale skin had a sickly sheen. He left the Room of Requirement freezing and embarassed. What if someone knew of his horrible fixation? What if someone would find out? Fellow students he passed did not understand the horrified glare in his glassy eyes or the red freckles that dotted his protuding cheekbones. They were left to make their own assumptions of Draco Malfoy's private life. Draco walked quickly down the hallways, trying to straighten his suit. A knotting was growing in his throat. Finally, he reached the staircase that lead down to the dungeons. He'd decided to take the most direct path to the Common Room, forsaking the long and lonely passage under the lake.

"What's going to happen to us?" Blaise's low and rich voice carried through the stone dormitory. Moonlight flooded into the room from a silver stained-glass window between Draco and Blaise's beds. It filled the room with a magical, ethereal light that Draco had fixated upon for the last hour or so. He hadn't known Blaise was awake. Yet he continued speaking. "Furthermore, what's to happen to the school? Everyone else in it?"

Draco blinked. He felt as if he was in a dream. "I haven't the slightest idea. Perhaps we'll all be killed. We're all to die in the end, aren't we?" he asked the skylit dusk. "What does it matter if it occurs here or there. I'd rather get death over with, waiting for it is unbearable."

"You're saying you'd like to die, Draco?" Blaise said it as if it were a statement, a proven fact that research and many complicated details to explain. No rush of grief overpowered his voice, no frightened air overtook him. It was merely a statement, as tiny and unimportant as the little white flowers Draco so reminded him of - a fragile, pale little creature, sick with his fate. It was presumed that it was only natural to wish for death when you were both a delicate elf-thing, for the world was ever so lacking to the beauty that lay inside; the realms of reality far too coarse and inhumane for your otherworldly desires.

Yet the sprite boy sitting in the far too large four post did not respond to quickly. He understood the tone of Blaise's voice, the knowing of the fact-like qualities of the words that encompassed his entire being, and Draco decided to think about it. To mull it over, to understand even the smallest detail before answering his best friend. He'd have to choose his words carefully, for they could be the most important things he'd ever say to Blaise, and they also could mean nothing. "I do not seek death," Draco said into the starlit night. "Yet it is in relentless pursuit." He knew many other things in his mind. He understood that wherever death was on its journey to find him, the journey would lead it to Hogwarts. He visualised the Death Eaters now - silver masks, dark smoke in the daylight, humans running through the Forbidden Forest, long black cloaks trailing behind them, seeking death and finding it in Draco. Yet he deserved it, did he not? The life of the worthless son would be retribution for the mistakes of the father, the events of the past, and the vengeance of the Dark Lord.

Draco pulled himself from his frightening reverie. Blaise spoke again. "Draco, you wish to leave, do you not? I know that you do - I can see it in your eyes. Hell, everyone can. Even Lydia's said things." He had gotten out of bed and walked over to Draco, grabbing his best friend's left hand. Draco sat up also, seeing that in the motion his left sleeve had come up, he pulled it down almost violently. Blaise noticed and understood immediately. "We _can _leave, Draco . . . and it'd be easy. We just have to do it. We can't have second thoughts."

The blonde boy felt his heart beat. He breathed. "Are you sure, Blaise?"

His best friend nodded. "Yes."

"When?"

"Now."

Moving faster than he ever had, Draco pulled his trunk from under his bed. He threw everything he could find into it - spare quills lay haphazardly around the room, a pair of trousers hung up on his footboard, a sock that was somewhere in the sheets. He took off his pajamas and also threw them into the trunk, he found his suit. It fit him perfectly and it was the only thing he enjoyed wearing. Black on black. Draco's grey eyes searched the rest of the dormitory frantically. This would be his last time in Hogwarts as a student. No tinge of nostaglia plagued him, he would be leaving without looking back. Once he had adequately searched the room for anything else he'd left, he looked to Blaise. "Where are we going?" He shoved his wand in his suit pocket.

"No idea. Why ask now?" Blaise shut up his trunk in a hurry.

Draco observed the two very full and very heavy trunks. "The trunks, Blaise, we can't carry them all around Europe. Why not _locomotor _them somewhere?" He crossed his arms.

Blaise shook his head. "Can't. Snapes put up those enchantments again. We can't Apparate and we can't do _locomotor_-whatever. Are you even sure that's how that spell works, Draco?" he laughed.

"No idea, flunked Charms."

Blaise laughed again. "We won't be carrying them for long. Let's leave the most direct way - front doors."

The small taste of almost freedom was tantalising to Draco. His body felt addicted to it, dependent on the adrenaline rush and the thrills of delinquacy. If they actually completed this miraculous feat, an escape from Hogwarts and their doomed lives, he would be high off of the feeling. He already could feel some of the elation. He moved with a purpose, his heart beat to carry his life forward, forward and far away into a moonlit night. He spent not a moment blowing kisses away to memories left behind.

Through and through the dark they ran, sprinting throughout the sleeping castle, their footsteps loud and awakening. They laughed and yelled together, rejoicing in newfound recklesness and impending freedom. They were coming closer to the front enterance and then they would be at the front doors - Draco's heart began to beat faster and faster, his legs took him through the air, closer and closer, he was almost there. They heard voices at their back, voices and noises of the administration and of fellow students. Neither of the boys turned back, but they fled to the night, throwing themselves at escape, waiting for them just outside the castle. They saw the doors. Blaise yelled, "_Reducto!_" and the doors came flying apart just as the friends raced through them. They were outside. They were in the grounds of the castle. A million diamond stars lit their path. Draco's angels lounged upon them, smiling peacefully at the boy. It was from their heavenly vantage point that the most glorious view was seen. Two adolescents charging away from the castle into freeing darkness, the Headmaster Severus Snape and other professors watching from the doors. Another Reductor Curse was cast at the towering, wrought iron gates at the edge of the forest. The two hinges burst open and the boys grasped hands. Draco turned on his heel, and the two vanished in a burst of green and silverish smoke that lingered in the air.

What the students who were watching at the gates would remember was the magnificient and legendary escape from Hogwarts. It would be all that was talked about in the castle for months. Yet even more scandalous than the escape was the moonlight shining on Draco Malfoy's left forearm. Wind that had been blown back at the boys from the Reductor Curse cast at the two front doors had caused Draco's suit sleeves to come up. There in the night, students and professors had all witnessed the Dark Mark glittering in accursed starlight, its image scarred into fragile and abandoning skin.

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><p>Once more, I LOVED writing this chapter! Its kinda long but it accomplished what this whole story has been leading up to :) ! Im SO SO SO grateful for every review, it really does make my day to know that others are reading my stories and enjoying them as much as I enjoy writing them! :)<p>

Hmm, is there any like little references in this chap-chap that I should say? Not sure, but the suit Draco says is the one he likes the best is the all black one in the Half Blood Prince movie. I LOVED how that looked on tom felton, so dark, so mysterious! Hehe, and thats how I imagined Draco looking when he left Hogwarts for the last time. Uhm, also I'm not sure if you can Locomotor trunks automatically to locations. And im really not sure if Reducto would force open doors, but maybe it could, idk!

Also; they're making Leavesden Studios into a Harry Potter museum!

Please review!:)

PS: I was listening to The Last Night by Skillet while writing this! Its an amazing song :)


	8. Snape

Chapter Eight; Snape

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><p>Ever since Snape encountered Lily, his life had changed forever. He considered himself irrevocably cursed by a broken-hearted angel - he was doomed to walk the earth all the days of his life without the thing he was so in need of, without the woman he dreamt of every night, and so utterly deprived of the life he had envisioned as a child. After he'd heard of Lily's death at the hands of the Dark Lord, Severus Snape imprisoned himself in a cage of darkness and sorrow. He'd serve his life sentence gladly, if only on his deathbed he'd be relinquished of the guilt that plagued him like a disease.<p>

Another side of Snape loved Draco like a son. Father than that, perhaps a nephew or a cousin. But he did love him, however distantly, and he held himself to the promises he swore to Narcissa. He bound himself to those promises, and that is why he had undone the protective Charms cast over the school grounds. Snape had a feeling Draco would not stay victim at the castle too long. Draco's heart was proud, fleeting, and victorious. He was a tortured soul. His very essence desired freedom and escape, his spirit demanded a life where every night was not spent in fear. Snape decided to allow Draco that.

One night, the reluctant headmaster walked through the castle. He removed the Impenetrable Charms on the front door, the Unbreaking Charms on the gates, the Shielding Charms on every window. And at that night, Snape felt a strange kind of peace. Once Draco leaved, Snape knew, the boy would be safe. He hoped Draco would find some sort of life for himself after the War was over. Horrible things were happening, and Draco was in the cross fires. His father had disappointed the Dark Lord. And now his son had failed to kill Dumbledore, a task specifically assigned to him. Draco was considered useless, a nuisance. He life could be threatened at any moment. Snape felt some misplaced sense of responsibility when it came to the only child of the Malfoy family. He despised the strange fascination the students had with him, especially the Slytherin students' uncanny reverence for the boy. They likened him to the elegance and fearlessness of his father, yet the boy lacked most of those traits. It seemed the respect was misplaced when it came to Draco, the ordinance he was granted with belonged to a man far more extroverted, powerful, and much lovelier than him. Yet Snape could understand their admiration; Draco was an attractive creature to fixate upon. He was stylish and carried an air of sophistication with him. Perhaps it lay with the way the boy carried himself, perhaps it was the mystery that encompassed his being. Especially since that last fateful night in the Astronomy Tower, Draco's popularity at Hogwarts had skyrocketed. With the Chosen One gone, Snape fancied that Draco had become the new Potter.

But the Headmaster had other matters to attend to. Just minutes after Draco and Zabini Disapparated into the night, the elder Malfoys arrived in the castle. They were both impeccably dressed and looked as if they had just attended a marvelous gala of some sort; Narcissa was wearing a long Slytherin green dress with just one shoulder and ruffles down the side, Lucius wore a tailored suit in the darkest shade of black, his thin tie matched his wife's dress exactly. In his right hand he grasped a black and green walking stick. Snape had seen it before, and his opinion of it had only grow worse. It was too gaudy for the Malfoys; the head of it resembled the Slytherin Crest and it was encrusted in some kind of precious stone. Lucius looked just as snarkily sophisticated as he always had, yet the refined nature that he exuded seemed to have been slightly chipped away. Perhaps it was his Azkaban stint that did it - his hair was not so much blonde as it was white, his eyes appeared to be more menacing than usual. Narcissa was covered in diamonds, she glittered in the dim candlelight of the castle. Their Side-Along Apparation left sparkling silvery dust that lingered whimsically in the air.

Lucius gripped the walking stick with a violent gloved hand. "How did this happen, Severus?" he shouted, his voice carrying across the Great Hall. Students who were slowly returning to their Common Rooms, discussing this most recent event giddily, paused and turned to observe. A smattering of whispers filled the air that had been penetrated by Lucius's voice. The gist of every murmur was (in amazed exasperation), '_That's _Lucius Malfoy!'. "You're a failure of a Headmaster if this is how you keep your security. I've heard Draco just ran off. Pointed his wand at the doors and left. Such advanced spellwork you have here, Severus, I'm amazed." He laughed angrily. "One more thing, notice Narcissa and I have just _Apparated_ in. I think Dumbledore did a better job than you." He smirked. Lucius was an image of his son.

Narcissa grasped Snape's arm. "Severus," she said frantically. "There must be a way - a way of tracking Draco, somehow! The Ministry - contact the Ministry, Severus, I beg you, do something!" Long crystally tears ran down her face as she sobbed to herself, muttering the entire time about her precious son, Draco, where he could be, what he was doing, what would posess him to run away like this. Unanswerable questions. Snape turned to Lucius.

"Your son, Lucius, is one of the most advanced young wizards I have seen in my lifetime. Mere doors could not restrain him. You and - _others _have taught him well," Snape said, surveying the entrance hall. Professors and older students looked down upon them from staircases, he saw one dark-haired Slytherin girl sobbing in her sweater. "Narcissa, Draco is seventeen, no?"

She nodded through her ugly sniffles. "Yes, turned last June-"

"If you shall recall, Draco is of age now. There is no Ministry-given way to track him, not through protective enchantments, magical monitoring, nothing. You can only hope that soon he will return to you. I doubt he and that Zabini boy will go far, Narcissa. As for you, Lucius, perhaps you can give me a few suggestions on improving security, I'm sure your time in Azkaban has taught you some things." Snape pulled his wand from somewhere in his billowing cloak. "Now, get out."

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><p>"It was in March of the year 1238 that the King Elf of the grandest Elf-City traversed the Irish countryside to come to the Second Elf-City, on which the King Elf Dendrath the Fifth encountered the King Elf of the Second Elf-City in Ireland, which was the King Elf Yirowen the Eighth. It was then on March the Twenty-First, year 1238 that the Irish elves and the Upper Irish elves found themselves in the Seventh Inter-Irish elven war . . ."<p>

Lydia Garnett rested her head in one manicured hand. Professor Binns' lecture on elven history had been going on for an hour and a half, so was it with double History of Magic. An extremely heavy and expensive textbook accompanied the subject - "_A Partial History of Irish Elves_" - which had exactly two thousand, seven hundred and seventy-two pages. Lydia had the book opened to its very last page, she had been staring at the page number for ages. 2,772. It was a hideous number. To make horrible manners worse, Lydia had nothing but gossip to entertain her. She was slightly offended that Blaise and Draco had taken off without her, but they had already gone, what could she do about it? She supposed she could attempt to write them letters, but where to adress them to? Lydia wondered idly if an owl could deliver a letter to just a person, no matter the address. They couldn't read, anyway.

If Draco had already been crowned the Heir of Slytherin his second year, and the Prince his sixth, Lydia figured this recent escape had cemented his status as star player in the Slytherin chess game. She supposed Lucius must be very proud of Draco, after all, what more could he want from his son? He was practically a celebrity in his own right, a green and silver counterpart to Potter. Lydia sighed. She hadn't the foggiest idea of why they left. Even more, why they left _her_. Did she annoy them too much? She could figure it out, her giddy enthusiasm for the life they loathed was a bit overpowering to them. They couldn't handle the uncontainable happiness that was manifested within her.

"I wonder where they've gone," Lydia said, quite loudly, to herself. She hadn't realised that Draco's Keeper, Sixth Year Spencer McConnell, was standing close to her. It was the end of the first day without Draco and Blaise. Spencer sat down in the puffy leather chaise beside her. He was a slender, rather handsome boy, with an uncommonly cheerful disposition that was rare to be found in Slytherin students. Pessimism came quite naturally to them, it seemed.

"Doesn't it seemed like Draco had to leave?" Spencer asked Lydia and the surrounding gang of fellow Sixth Years that crowded round the popular boy wherever he went. "He looked like a corpse walking around the castle. Maybe he looked like he moved on the outside, but on the inside, he was dead. He was searching for life, I could see it in his eyes, Lydia . . . we can hope that he found life outside these walls."

Lydia rested her head on one pale hand. "How well did you even know him, Spencer? Me and Draco have been best friends since we were six - our families knew eachother. We'd go and play out in the sunshine for days; please don't say you knew him better than I did." Lydia suddenly grew fiercely protective of her absent comrade. "Draco had his own reasons for leaving. Somehow things will come together for him, Spencer. I've seen him walking these halls, too. But Draco is under pressure we cannot imagine." She averted her eyes from Spencer's hazel gaze. "Besides, he's just seventeen. He has an entire life laying out before him. He can't possibly give up."

Spencer tilted his head. "Lydia, do you honestly think he feels seventeen?"

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><p>Ehm, I think this chapter is *ok*. I think some things needed to be accomplished and this chapter did them (How Lydia feels, HWs feels, Malfoys feel). I like the Snape bit, and I like the last sentence. But Im VEERRYY excited to write the next chapter, D&amp;B's adventure. :) The last sentence is from the movie Friday Night Lights, which I <em>LOVE.<em>


	9. Retourne a la Rêve

Chapter Nine; Retourne a la Rêve

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><p>In a flurry of silver and green mist, the two appeared in the wood. A silver moon and one thousand stars cascaded down upon them. They shone iridescent and pure above the flawed cohorts. A grey-skinned boy with silver hair falling into his silver eyes and his companion. They stood together, side by side. Quivering palm to quivering palm. Eyes beginning with wonder and falling into desperate despair. The realm was as so; the sky above was darkened as with a natural night, yet the myriad of glittering celestial bodies that inhabited it filled every occupiable space of the comforting dark, creating a forever twilight that lingered in the veil above. Yet the earth there was so lovely that there were pieces that had broken off from the stars and ventured down to dance with the towering, white trees and the pale lilies by the water. There the little stardusts fell, so very close to the two boys who were amazed at their presence. The trees were all very similar in the wood; grand, white and hugely thick. From their glowing, gnarled trunks came delicate curved branches which sprouted a variety of blossoms. The majority of these were in shades of purple, from lilac to rich eggplant, yet some were a light pink and others a resounding and perfect white. Imagined birds sung in the distance. Draco sunk to his knees at the side of a brook that danced interwoven through the wood.<p>

In the midst of the surrounding perfection, Draco was perhaps even more obviously flawed. In the whiteness of the place, his skin was a sallower shade of gray. His cheekbones protruded further away from his frightened face, his once delicate bone structure appeared sickly and malnourished. There he observed these things, his unearthly eyes peering into the still waters of the brook. They looked innocently back at him. Draco's eyes were a crystalline pool of silver water, materialised into an imperfect jewel, a cloudy diamond, that granted him unwanted vision of his tragic existence. Bony hands grasped at the cold stones lining the brook. Draco's shoulders began to collapse under his racing thoughts.

"Draco," Blaise asked, examining his surroundings in the clearing. "Where are we? What is this?"

The silver haired boy, in a crumpled heap, cleared his throat and whispered hoarsely, "I don't know what this is, Blaise. But - I know I've _seen_ this . . . I know I've been here. In a dream - long ago."

Freedom was an elusive goddess who's temple lay in the dwindling dreams Draco so often visited. She was worshipped constantly within the shadowy boughs of night, her followers' tearful eyes gazing incessantly at her moon and its surrounding stars, loving and persuasive patrons of dedication. Let them look into the sky, she said, pale hair flowing down her side, white pupils framed by a fringe of dark lashes that reached out from their confines. My most adored creation, and be reminded of the life they lack, the soul caged by unending chains of fate. They shall search without respite or solace, guided only by me and the desires I pervade. Her worship was not restrained in formal institutes, in the wilderness her temples lay.

Grief was the deepest essence of the goddess's being. She could not be defined in the absence of those who confine and capture, neither could grief exist without her constant calls of seduction. And because grief is what validified her, what created her, she was utterly enraptured by it. The creature, the figment of Draco's personified lust was as beautiful as the idea of her. Yet when Draco thought of her, he felt the grief and the sorrow that a life ever reaching twoard freedom creates for itself. And Draco understood that she would be his life, her beauty would be his beauty, and her pain would be his pain.

Deviance from her the goddess did not punish. Retribution for hopeless docility were here arms of desire that called her followers nearer and nearer. Acceptance of their chains was the cardinal sin.

Draco and Blaise rested under the curving branches of a pale weeping willow for what could have been ages. Their previous ideas of time didn't seem to function in the wood. The lightness of the realm never modified itself according the feeble turnings of the galaxy. The many lightened boughs moved gently in the soft breeze. Unseen birds chirped in the distance. They were neither hungry nor tired. Draco was not cold or warm, yet he felt the soft breeze against his skin, and Blaise's body softly leaning on his. They did not feel any human malady. And they did not speak, yet continued to sit in the grey wood in perfect silence, left alone to their thoughts.

Draco noticed many things about the sanctum they had arrived at. Out of the many things Draco noticed, he found it especially curious that the collections of stars moved gently across the empyrea, but never the moon. The collosus remained at its place in the sky, close enough to see its iridescent craters, yet ever so far away. He imagined reaching his hand out in the sky to touch it. He imagined flying away into the sky on his broomstick until he reached the moon, only for it to forever be decades before him, and himself flying ceaselessly twoards it, attempting to somehow close the space between himself and the unreachable, unescapable white satellite. I shall catch the moon.

* * *

><p>"Have they killed us, Draco, and is this the afterlife?" Blaise's voice rung out sweetly and richly through the daydream vale. He lay casually in the strange grass of the place, terribly short and white, yet entirely soft and un-prickely. "I don't suppose this is heaven. It is a strange idea of heaven if it is. And imagine, we are in heaven together, with no one else but me and you." He sighed, smiling up into the starry shades of un-night. "It would be a strange God to do such a thing. Yet, think, perhaps this is a purgatory of some sort. We are sinners both condemned of the same crime, and our punishment is to outlive eternity in a wood that knows no light, no dark. Only whiteness, the absence of colour, the absence of any tinges of the world."<p>

Draco sat beside him. "I don't believe it is the afterlife, Blaise," he said quietly, eyes appraising the dark-skinned boy. "Maybe it is a temporary solace for us. Could that be it? I've visited this wood in my dreams, Blaise, long ago." Draco frowned and gazed about the vale. "It would be a bizarre eternity spent in this heaven. Neither light nor dark. A strange otherworld I've created. Yet how did I bring you with me?"

Blaise shrugged at his resting place on the pale grass. "The rules of time nor space apply. Do you think our parents are worried?"

Draco answered, "I haven't thought about them since we Apparated here, Blaise. But now that I think about it, I'm sure they're terrified," he laughed quietly. "What if they thought I've run off and joined Potter?" Blaise laughed too, and he stretched out his arms before him. "If we returned, I wonder what day it would be with them," Draco mused. "Perhaps they have raced off into the future and it has been months or years, or perhaps it has only been an hour our two? Maybe only a second would've changed and we'd be back at Hogwarts, outside the gates with Snape and the other professors shouting curses." A visible shaking rocked Draco's frail body. He had a strong convulsion and breathed in deeply. "My God," he rested his pale head on his bony knee. "Its horrific. Absolutely horrific."

"Don't think about that now, Draco. Its needless to think about it now. We could stay here for all eternity and you'd be safe from them," Blaise said, his voice stronger than before, growing in seriousness. He despised the terrors that shook Draco's frame. The deepest and most ravaging hate he felt was twoards Draco's fears, the fears Draco let overcome his life. "Don't let the woes of the world bother you when you lounge in eternity."

* * *

><p>YES! Chapter 9's is DONE. Fini! I was having LOADS of trouble writing the firs part, first they were in a scary forest and then I thought they should end up in Draco's dream. OK, to explain what I think the place is: It is a modified 'Room of Requirement'. Yet it is Draco's dream. It is exactly what they needed at the time. The place is shrouded in magic. it does not exist in the corporeal universe ( just like the RoR does not show up on the Marauders Map). The idea made sense to ME, but it not make sense to everyone.<p>

and I know that Blaise's dialogue is kind of (VERY) ooc. But when you actually have what 17 year old boy-dialect in a passage that is supposed to be otherworldly and perfect, it kind of ruins the tone and mood of the scene. Um the silver symbolizes purity, the grey symbolizes the flawed-ness of Draco.

I got in a crash last night and totaled my car. What I felt was complete terror - I was shaking and convulsing and screaming and crying until my parents arrived (I'm 16 and have had my car for around 4 months) and even then I was still in a state of shock. I even had nightmares about the crash, the force of the other car slamming into mine, (I drive a mazda 3 and the other car was a Jeep-mine's destroyed) the deflated airbag and the smoke rising up in my car. What I felt is what I imagine Draco feels . . . complete terror, yet his is omnipresent. Thankfully I escaped the accident relatively unharmed. I have lots of bruises and small cuts, but other than that PERFECT. God was watching over me. Thanks for reading!:)


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